Configuring Citrix to open a specific Access database

We deployed Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 in a five-server farm at one of our clients. They use it for Office 2003 and ERP program application serving. I’ve worked with Citrix in the past, and my impression is it’s a great product that takes a while to learn. It takes longer to get really good at it. The Citrix community seems like a secret club where they are nice to their big resellers and the others are just an afterthought. We are not a Citrix Partner, nor do we play one on TV, nor are we auditioning for any roles.

My last interaction with Citrix was a support call to get pass-through authentication to work. I had to call because their support site is lame. I was 90% there, but was missing the last 10%. The support engineer was rude and had this smug “I-can’t-believe-you-don’t know-this” attitude. Excuse me sir, but we’re paying you $400. Would it kill you to be nice? Windows 2008 TS Remote App provides almost all of the functionality of Citrix with a fraction of the hassle.

So another request came up: can we publish an application that has Access open a specific database? My colleague worked on a couple different ways but they didn’t work. I suggested we publish MS Access as a separate app with a switch to open a specific DB. Using this article we set the command line of the app to read:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\MSACCESS.EXE” “\\contoso.com\DFS\Files\Sales\SalesStats.MDB”

Worked like a charm. Day saved, cocktail hour earned.